The present invention relates to a plate-shaped filter element made of several layers of a wire cloth.
Nothing in the following discussion of the state of the art is to be construed as an admission of prior art.
The layers forming the plate-shaped filter element typically include metallic meshes. The plate-shaped filter element could also be labeled as composite plate. Such filter elements are known in many configurations. The pore size of the filter cloth depends on the sizes of the particles being filtered. To separate particles from a material, a liquid, an emulsion or like stuff, two different processes are known. According to a first process, separation of the particles is implemented by a screening device and according to a second process by a filtering device which contains the plate-shaped filter or cloth layers.
Plate-shaped filter elements used for filtering heretofore have a filter cloth which is made exclusively from the warp wires and the weft wires extending at a right angle thereto. As a consequence, tetragonal meshes or three-dimensional triangles or interstices are created in projection. Although such filter cloths have shown their usefulness, they are not entirely satisfactory for certain applications, e.g. for filtering particles of certain size from an emulsion.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to provide an improved plate-shaped filter element to obviate prior art shortcomings and to allow filtering of particles of a particular size from a filterable material. In particular, particles should be filtered out from a liquid, an emulsion or the like.